A public safety program available throughout the Arkansas River Valley can help provide 9-1-1 operators with vital information about callers.

Smart911 is a program free to citizens that allows them to create a user profile containing a variety of information ranging from medical conditions and medications for all members of a household to information about pets and vehicles.

According to the company’s website, “Smart911 is a free service that allows citizens across the U.S. to create a Safety Profile for their household that includes any information they want 9-1-1 to have in the event of an emergency. Then, when anyone in that household dials 9-1-1 from a phone associated with their Safety Profile, their profile is immediately displayed to the 9-1-1 call taker providing additional information that can be used to facilitate the proper response to the proper location.

“At a time when seconds count, being about to provide 9-1-1 with all details that could impact response the second an emergency call is placed could be the difference between life and death.”

Pope County Office of Emergency Management (OEM) director David Freeman said the benefits of the program can vary. In addition to containing vital medical information, Smart911 users can include information about their vehicles, including the VIN and license plate numbers, which can help authorities locate a stolen vehicle.

“If you get your vehicle stolen, you’re not going to have your VIN, and a lot of people don’t know their tag number,” he said.

Photos can also be uploaded, which can be beneficial in providing authorities immediate access to high-quality pictures, which can be useful especially in cases of missing persons and Amber Alerts.

“Sometimes the delay of getting an Amber Alert issued for a missing child is you have to have a photo to attach to it,” Freeman said.

Pope County has used the Smart911 program since last year, but not many residents have signed up for the program, largely because many do not know about it, Freeman said.

“We started in mid-2012 with it,” he said. “We know people are reserved about using stuff like that, putting too much information on the Internet. We do need to get the word out and see if they would choose to use it or not.”

Freeman said the company that operates Smart911 has given assurances that the information included in the profiles is secure. The company states on its website, “Smart911 takes security seriously — your privacy is our business. You can trust that your information is stored in top-tier secure facilities and that we adhere to the strictest of regulations and monitoring systems.”

One of the benefits of Smart911 is that it functions in any location that uses the program. The program is deployed in most Arkansas areas, which means a user from Russellville who travels to another county and calls emergency services will still benefit from having a profile. This also applies to other areas of the country that use the program.

“You can enter your profile in Arkansas, and if you’re in another state in the U.S. that has it ... you could call 9-1-1 in Alaska and your profile would be displayed,” Freeman said.

Freeman said having a Smart911 profile does not mean a caller should not communicate with dispatchers if he or she is able to do so, but the profile should instead act as an additional source of information.

In June 2012, Arkansas became the first state to implement the program statewide. As of February, a reported 90 percent of the state’s 911 centers had implemted Smart911.